The entire thing is indicative of the failure of the hippy project to even contemplate enacting real change. You wanna change the world? Nah, take LSD instead, “don’t you know it’s gonna be alright?”.
The idea that any of these people genuinely believed they were doing anything other than assisting in the maintenance of the status quo is laughable.
Of course I’m not saying I thought rock stars represented the ideological pinnacle of the movement, but I’d claim that this sort of thought is indicative of the wider milieu.
"don't you know it's gonna be alright?" this pretty much sums up the hippie movement as not caring about anything besides having a good time. Yes, they were really all about just embracing love and taking wild psychedelic drugs while listening to awesome rock music at the time. It freaked conservatives the fuck out, and is more or less what those lyrics are aimed at. The hippie movement really was not that political. It was politicized in the culture war BS at the time and later through the Manson family trials that the media was using to pretty much kill the hippie movement all together (and it worked. The only hippies you see anymore are Grateful Dead fans).
If you're looking for someone who actually had left based tendencies from that era and wrote them briefly in their lyrics, look up Peter Green. Not many people are aware of the original Fleetwood Mac and the fact they were a blues rock band and headed by this guy. At the time in the late 60s, Green was one of the most highly respected guitar players in the British rock scene and his playing influenced countless musicians and bands that followed (Carlos Santana got famous for covering Black Magic Woman , not a lot of people are aware it's a Fleetwood Mac song). If you really dig into Green, you'll find that he was completely disillusioned with the entertainment industry by 1969 and he started writing anti-capitalist lyrics in some of his songs and wanted to quit the band after recording the album Then Play On. Showbiz Blues has some lines in it about greed. Man of the World has lyrics that clearly demonstrate someone who sees beyond wealth and consumerism, and there absolutely is not another song with lyrics like that from the 60s. There is also Green Manalishi a song he said was about the devil and greed (Green meaning money and a "two pronged crown" in reference to devil horns).
The "official" story about Green's downfall according to Mick Fleetwood and John McVie is that he overdosed on LSD at a commune in Germany and became mentally ill afterwards as he didn't want to become a rich rock star. This is known as the "Munich incident" and was never the same again after that. But if you dig into Green, he was quite vocal about how disillusioned he was with the entertainment industry by 1969 and he was in a feud with the rest of the band and their manager based on the fact none of them wanted to donate money to charities or perform for the poor. The book Red Army Blues has a good bit in it about Green hanging out with German Marxists and anarchists and them having a bit of an influence on him. He was friends with the band Amon Dull II and at one point planned to move to east Germany and play with krautrock musicians (his solo album 'The End of the Game' sounds like early krautrock) He was angry at Fleetwood Mac's manager for getting rich and then became disgruntled with the band when they all told him he was nuts for wanting to give his wealth away. Green is one of those rare cases of an immensely talented musician who rejected the music industry's star system and stepped away for good. Unfortunately, the "official" story is passed around as fact and few really dig into him and see where his mind was at the time.
he was quite vocal about how disillusioned he was with the entertainment industry by 1969 and he was in a feud with the rest of the band and their manager based on the fact none of them wanted to donate money to charities or perform for the poor.
This pans out considering how the Stevie Nicks era of Fleetwood Mac was basically them doing coke all the time and showing up in individual mega-limos to all their shows.
The other members of Fleetwood Mac did not like Green's idea of giving money to charities and performing concerts for the poor. They tried to say he was mentally ill and not all right in the head for not wanting to be a rich rock star. Mick Fleetwood still to this day claims Green became mentally ill after the much talked about "Munich incident". In reality, the only thing that really changed after Munich was Green told the band and their manager Clifford Davis that he wanted access to their funds so he could start donating their money to charities himself since it became evident to him they had no interest in doing it. This scared the living shit out of the band as they realized that their meal ticket was about to be over. Green more than ever was now talking about performing for free and wanting nothing to do with the music industry.
He quit the band right after that when their 1970 tour ended. Green was "mentally ill" now according to the band cause he didn't want to be a rich rock star. He actually re-surfaced a few months later in 1970 as a sessions musician on an album for Eddie Boyd and he did guitar work for Peter Bardens on his debut album. Green went uncredited on these albums and refused royalties, often citing that the work was done out of respect and friendship. Here he is playing guitar for Bardens if you want to judge for yourself if he was mentally ill at the time as Mick Fleetwood loves to claim.
It's interesting you mention the mega limos and all that, cause Green wanted nothing to do with the band or Stevie Nicks after he resurfaced from being institutionalized. Before he died this year, Mick Fleetwood had this all star lineup for a tribute concert in February and he begged Green to attend, and he refused. Stevie Nicks said after he died this past year her biggest regret was not sharing a stage with him. There are many stories about Fleetwood and John McVie begging Green to come back and embrace their wealth, and he just refused every chance. They begged him for years to rejoin Fleetwood Mac and he wanted nothing to do with them. In every story Mick Fleetwood tells, it's always in a condescendingly tone of "that's just how Peter is... he don't see the world like we do and I guess he never will."
The talk from Fleetwood and the official stories was that he was just crazy and became mentally ill from LSD, but it clearly wasn't that. The man saw the entertainment industry for what it was and he wanted out. Green did have mental health issues and a breakdown but it seemed to be around the year 1972 after he was long out of the music industry. He had another mental breakdown in the 80s where he wound up homeless. There's a story about him growing his fingernails so he couldn't play guitar and be reminded of what he once was. He lived a sad life and it's even sadder that the official story of him gets repeated over and over as if it's the gospel. I found out most of this about him from the book Red Army Blues and then seeking his real authorized biography.
It’s interesting you mention the mega limos and all that, cause Green wanted nothing to do with the band or Stevie Nicks
Is there any reason in particular why he disliked Stevie Nicks? Was it because of the rejection of shallow wealth in lieu of a more fulfilling life of philanthropy of which he saw Nicks connected to? Did this also extend to Buckingham as well?
I really like the song, but its politics are awful.
"You say you'll change the constitution
Well, you know
We all want to change your head
You tell me it's the institution
Well, you know
You better free you mind instead"Is basically "materialism don't real"... complete hippie nonsense
"But if you go carrying pictures of chairman Mao
You ain't going to make it with anyone anyhow"PR is more important than being morally and ideologically coherent. Lib shit.
Edit: Here's the song, man that opening part RIPS. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MbqzDm1uCo
It's really not surprising that boomers turned out to be self-obsessed right wing freaks
So I was listening thru some Chuck Berry and like 4 songs in I found another thing they stole from him.
I googled it and apparently they got sued for it. Or the rightsholder did at least. What a bunch of tools. They could have just thanked him and credited him as an influence but I dunno if that was ever done.
wtf this one is more blatant IMO they even use his lyrics.
Edit: It does look like Lennon and Berry knew eachother. They very likely had permission
they estranged phil ochs for being too radical despite hanging out with him all the time
dude killed himself due to this and because a guy broke his windpipe because he liked mao and he couldnt produce music anymore
I think it was more untreated bipolar that got Phil in the end.
Before he killed himself he was writing an album about the last year of his life where he was having a psychotic break, due to the loss of his voice and increasing paranoia, and going under the persona of John/Luke Train, and it genuinely sounds like his voice was healing in this recording 4 months before he killed himself https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzFQBASpfKk (2 years after the mugging) in comparison to this from the year before https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uy26mFpn3eo (1 year after the mugging).
Personally, I think he was in a particularly depressive and paranoid state and he made a rash decision. Ultimately though, I don't know exactly what happened but either way it's a sad fucking state of affairs and the lack of proper mental health care is disastrous.
"He was planning an album that would be an unflinching narrative of his psychosis over the past year and had at least ten songs in various states. Five of those songs are represented here. The working title for the album was Duel In The Sun. Soon after the New Year Phil started to come around less until he eventually moved in with his sister Sonny in Far Rockaway. We would talk on the phone but I would never see him again." - from the description of the last recording.
The terrible death of his friend Victor Jara probably added to it too
really sad about it tbh. wish he didnt do it so i could have the chance to watch him perform live and have a convo with him after
If you haven't you should listen to the interviews he had during his psychosis. It's so fucking sad.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHwIj-gYiNA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWmaF1DEEoA
The main gist is he speaks about how Phil Ochs was an amateur and a phony and never challenged the government so they wouldn't kill him. And how he, as John/Luke Train, kills Phil Ochs in a hotel after a night of drinking and emerges as the true artist. There's a lot of resentment towards Bob Dylan too.
Counter-counterpoint: carrying pictures of chairman Mao
:mao-aggro-shining:
Commodification of iconoclasm, phrase courtesy of Mark Fisher in Capitalist Realism
There's an alternate history somewhere where all the hippies learned to use guns and homebrew explosives instead of rectally ingesting quaaludes.
Uh, a lot of em did. Fat load of good it did for em, hell probably helped Reagan win
The weather underground is the tip of the bloody iceberg m8. Read Days of Rage sometime.
There was like 4 political bombings a day in America in the late 60's-early 70's
From Time: "Weather’s attacks began three months later, and by 1971 protest bombings had spread across the country. In a single eighteen-month period during 1971 and 1972 the FBI counted an amazing 2,500 bombings on American soil, almost five a day. Because they were typically detonated late at night, few caused serious injury, leading to a kind of grudging public acceptance. The deadliest underground attack of the decade, in fact, killed all of four people" - Truly terrifying. Those fucking empty buildings got fucking OWNED.
Plane hijacking, bank robberies, weather shit was nit just weather fam. Read Days of Rage instead of wikipedia-ing shit
cuck fucker.
This is an interesting title. Someone who fucks cucks?
Steal This Book had radical stuff for 50 years ago, from shoplifting to starting local pirate TV stations to bomb making. There were definitely some real ones among the counterculture
The Puerto ricans, various radical factions of the black panthers, a group of blue collar bostoners with like kids and shit did it on the side, whole thing. Most groups were like you and your closest three mates if you decided to go blow shit up
Along the same lines, the fact that Timothy Leary existed as a public figure was a deathblow to the counterculture of the time. That asshole is almost as bad as Nixon in terms of responsibility for the demonization of LSD, too. Hunter S Thompson had a great quote on this (which touches on the generation's heavy drug use as a whole):
“We are all wired into a survival trip now. No more of the speed that fueled that 60's. That was the fatal flaw in Tim Leary's trip. He crashed around America selling "consciousness expansion" without ever giving a thought to the grim meat-hook realities that were lying in wait for all the people who took him seriously... All those pathetically eager acid freaks who thought they could buy Peace and Understanding for three bucks a hit. But their loss and failure is ours too. What Leary took down with him was the central illusion of a whole life-style that he helped create... a generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood the essential old-mystic fallacy of the Acid Culture: the desperate assumption that somebody... or at least some force - is tending the light at the end of the tunnel.”
Generation Loss did an episode on Fear and Loathing in LV on their last pod, they made some great points talking about leftists today needing to avoid to pitfalls that the counter-culture fell into (the discussion was kind of a tangent about the “you can see where the wave broke” monologue). Good episode.
no i will not read another Hunter S Thompson book that's not Fear and Loathing stop asking
I tried the Great Shark Hunt and I think it was about doing drugs at the kentucky derby? That was a pretty fun bit. And Steadman's book on HST but that probably doesnt count
Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail is great although also kind of terrifying given how little has changed
Would you say that to my face?
Yes? Well how about at gunpoint, does that change the equation?
I wrote some goddamn masterpieces.
Ain't that the truth. Unless you're looking for some acid. Then they're often pretty useful.
Baby You're A Rich Man is fantastic & I have no idea what that icon is supposed to mean.
All but Ringo had a middle-class upbringing so their attitude is unsurprising. After that they spent their lived insulated by wealth and fame. Even travelling to India none of them seem particularly concerned with the poverty.
Also they hated hippies, especially American ones. There's a interview with Harrison where he recalls him (and Paul I think?) going to Woodstock, and he says completely dry "they were all just bums really" lol. There's no doubt the hippy movement was partially psyop to damage counterculture which before that was alcohol fueled violence, leather jackets and motorcycles.
I think as far as Lennon goes at least he did protest the war but never had the class consciousness to actually articulate why the war was bad other than "violence bad". So that does play in to what you're saying.
